Thursday, June 18, 2015

Maximum Freedom, Maximum Responsibility

It is with understandable frustration that Roosh recently wrote this post on his site claiming that people do not deserve the freedom they've been given. And when you compare what western civilization has become against the 4,000 years of intelligence, independent thought, sacrifice, war, morality, and altruism our forefathers paid/thought/endured/suffered to make such freedoms possible, you can understand his point.

Pajama boys of modern day America demanding an increasing state compared to the WWII soldiers who fought against a forever growing state.

Girls obsessed with taking selfies when Galileo was ostracized for daring to insist the Earth orbited the sun.

And the years of precious and finite life the likes of Edison, Ford, Saulk, Bourlaug, the Wright Brothers, etc. sacrificed all so a generation of navel-gazers could concoct reasons of how they were oppressed and cheer on the "bravery" of Bruce Jenner.

It is no doubt sickening how the sacrifices and prices paid by generations past have resulted in the most spoiled and worthless generations of the Baby Boomers, Gen X and Millennials of today. However, while Roosh's logic is sound, and his visceral disgust with humanity 100% valid, his argument against freedom for people is flawed. Not by any fault of his own, but by the faults inherent in democracy and the society we live in today.

Understand that previous to democracy and even modern day civilizations, there were automatic punishments built into the world that people would pay should they make stupid decisions.

Did you poke a saber tooth tiger with a stick?Did you spook a herd of mammoth into stampeding the village?Did you eat berries that you saw no other animal eat?

If you did any one of these stupid things, you would die and your stupid genes along with it.

However, even within civilization stupid decisions were punished.

Did you breed without being married, thereby forcing the tribe or village to support your mistake?Did you parasite off of society insisting on being a talentless bard instead of an industrious farmer?Did you commit crimes, stealing from people precious food and items that were in short supply?

Well at best you'd be ostracized, and at worst, you'd be killed. Again, taking your inferior genes and decision making ability out of the gene pool.

The point is that yes, you had the personal freedom to do many things. But neither society nor nature was going to protect you from the costs and consequences of making bad decisions. In other words, yes you had maximum, 100% freedom, but you also had maximum, 100% responsibility.

Enter democracy.

Through trial and error, 4,000 years of war, and a little philosophy along the way, government has evolved to its most advanced state - "democracy." And while it certainly has some benefits, the primary drawback of democracy is that it gives people the right to vote to enslave and live off of others.

This not only gives rise to politicians who simply run on a platform of wealth redistribution, but also one that bails out the stupid at the expense of the smart. And so now, today, 70% of the state, local, and federal budgets are NOT spent on public goods that benefit all, but are nothing more than TARP-like bailout programs, bailing people out of their spectacularly stupid mistakes.

Did you breed more children than you could afford?That's alright, Roissy will pay for it with more taxes.

Did you major in a stupid subject, borrowing $120,000 in student loans which you can never hope to pay back?That's alright, Roosh will pay for it with more taxes.

Did you fail to save for retirement because you were too busy partying in the 1960's, smoking pot, telling your WWII generation parents they were "squares?"Don't worry, Rollo's got you cover with extra taxes to bail you out.

In other words, we aren't so much giving people money for bribery for votes (though that is true) as much as we are inoculating and shielding them from the full cost and consequences of their mistakes. And that is why people don't deserve the freedom they've been given. Not because they don't inherently deserve maximum freedom, but because they've never suffered or endured the negative reinforcement lessons that life teaches you.

The argument then, for limiting people's freedoms is compelling. For a society incapable of learning through negative reinforcement and fatherly love will suffer and ultimately destroy itself in three major ways.

One, nobody will ever grow up to become competent, self-supporting adults. They will forever remain post-pubescent children. This is no more apparent than the laughing stock that is known as Millennial College Students. Yes, some are self-supporting. Yes, some will become contributing adults in society. But never has there been a higher percentage of not only fully-dependent pariahs, but equally psychotic ones as well. They are not obsessed about accruing enough in savings to retire successfully, as much as they are beating themselves up over their "white privilege." They are not concerned about attracting the opposite sex as much as they are blaming them for all the ails in the world. And they are not concerned about the $18 trillion in debt they voted to enslave themselves into (most of them don't even know what a trillion is), as much as they are "going green" and their "carbon footprint." In other words these are completely dysfunctional and worthless people to society who will come nowhere near to producing the economic production necessary to support themselves and will become an ever bigger financial burden on society than the baby boomers.

Two, constantly bailing out people from their mistakes prevents the economy and society from purging the cancerous humans from our institutions and engines of economic growth. Nearly every banker scum bag who had a hand in creating the financial disaster is still employed in their same capacity. Nearly every college student today will be bailed out of their by a soothe-saying politician either directly or by creating make-work programs that only further tax society. And it is my humble estimation that the next generation of children to be raised by single moms will be the final straw that breaks the economy's back as government checks may put food on the table, but they do not raise strong, independent, law-abiding, economic-powerhousing men.

Banksters will still be crippling out financial system.
Liberal arts majors will still be parasiting off of the non-profit, academia, public sector world.
And the quality of children will NOT be improving, but rather worsening, providing no hope for a future recovery.

And finally, three, demographics.

Sorry, the fact of the matter is that stupid people breed. And my further apologies by pointing out the additional truth that stupid people tend to breed stupid people. Idiocracy is not a work of fiction, but a documentary.

How did this come to be?

Well, democracy, once again, allows us to bail out all the stupid people who made the most idiotic mistake they can make - breeding kids they can't afford. Of course this taxes the smarter, more responsible people who would have other wise had children (should society be more merocratic), which further delays their breeding to the point they may never have kids. And alas, since it's too impolite to force the losers of society to bear the full cost of the illegitimate children they spawned, they will not only fail to learn their lesson, but breed more, ensuring society has a critical mass of stupid people who simply are not capable of supporting society.

However, while the consequences of letting people have unlimited freedom may mean the ultimate demise of the world's greatest society, it is not in letting people have freedom that is the problem. It is in shielding them from the full costs of their mistakes. It is preventing them from taking 100% responsibility for their actions where the problem lies. And if we were to take action and enact policies that no longer bailed people out (be they bankers, liberal arts students, single moms, or public union pensioners), those natural laws of negative-reinforcement, punishment, and tough fatherly love would do the work for us, relieving us of the duty of "determining" which freedoms people should or should not have.

Of course, this is all very academic and fanciful, and equally so in both camps.

Roosh's theoretical advocation of rescinding the voting rights of unmarried parents would be equally lead-balloony as my advocation of the immediate elimination of all income transfers. Not only is the cat out of the bag (in the fact it is no longer property owners who can vote), but society is so stupid we would both likely be accused of being "bigots" and "haters," and ran out of town. However, since this is all in "Shoulda Land" there is one more compelling reason humanity, no matter how long it is in the future, should never have their freedoms limited as opposed to their responsibilities fully enforced:

Who, precisely will determine what people are allowed what freedoms?

Sadly, the answer is the state, as it is only the state that can enforce such things. And sadly the state is not only completely incapable of determining with reasonable morality and justice who should have what freedoms, but it is also highly corruptible with ideologues and politicians only too happy to oppress and destroy those citizens who disagree with them, further ensuring their own power. In short, going the route of limiting people's freedoms is not only impossible, but it will only end in complete tyranny and totalitarianism.

Ergo, the only answer in this mentally stimulating but completely theoretical debate is to enforce responsibility.

Did that aging dudebro-banker douche make $45 million in loans to his buddy who had no intention of paying him back?
Let the bank collapse and with it his career.

Did that single mom have another kid with yet another man that "all of the sudden became a real jerk" .0002 milliseconds after she gave birth with no signs whatsoever?
Too bad, there's the shelter and here's an adoption agency.

And did Madison McMillennial get her 3rd doctorate in Women Afro Cross-Sectionality Studies at that prestigious small liberal arts college in Massachusetts with $200,000 in debt?
Too bad, hope you know how to make Big Macs, serve coffee, and like Ramen noodles because that' is the rest of your life.

Alas, you don't need to "punish" people by taking away their freedoms. You simply need to reintroduce the responsibility politicians have taken away from it over the past 50 years. And trust me, bearing the full costs and consequences of the mistakes people have made in their lives, simply making them be fully-responsible adults will be an unbearable and insufferable punishment that nearly none of them would ever be able to endure.

12 comments:

This probably does not include Roosh, but much of the argument for limiting people's liberty is not just because people make poor choices that result in bad outcomes. Such arguments are often used to limit the liberty of those who actually make good productive choices for ideological reasons as well as rent-seeking parasitism.

This probably does not include Roosh, but much of the argument for limiting people's liberty is not just because people make poor choices that result in bad outcomes. Such arguments are often used to limit the liberty of those who actually make good productive choices for ideological reasons as well as rent-seeking parasitism.

The problem is with all this crappy 'democracy' plenty of allegedly 'smart' people have allowed the stupid to perpetuate under the belief that if they are given enough free stuff poverty would disappear; instead we have the same percentage of people in poverty since these programs were begun in the 60's. Education levels are worse despite the money spent.

I've told these do-gooders that no amount of free stuff is going to change these people's stupid decisions or processes that got them their. Granted, there are some genuinely poor people through a work injury or other circumstances, but I suspect those are the minority.

Yup. Freedom should come with responsibility. If people never know they are making mistakes they will never change their ways. Also I find it unfair to "bail out" people who basically brought everything on themselves because they live without any planning or interest in the world.

I don't believe in putting barriers down, it can be easily abused by the wrong people.

In IT we refer to users thusly: "Being stupid has to hurt. If it doesn't hurt, people won't stop being stupid."

People stopped misplacing their access keyfobs and laptop AC adapters once we started charging them $100 each to replace them. Not coincidentally, the office was more productive, as there was less time wasted scrabbling up replacements and having people sitting idle.

"However, while the consequences of letting people have unlimited freedom may mean the ultimate demise of the world's greatest society, it is not in letting people have freedom that is the problem. It is in shielding them from the full costs of their mistakes. It is preventing them from taking 100% responsibility for their actions where the problem lies."

Well said, Captain! This gets at the heart of the whole matter. Roosh seems to be thinking of freedom from responsibility, which is an interesting way to think of what it means to be free, because ultimately this sort of "freedom" requires enslaving others. Roosh sees people, particularly women, run amok because they are able to behave however they wish without fear of consequences, but we have to keep in mind that this "freedom" they exercise comes only at the expense of others whose actual rights are violated in order to subsidize their life choices. Without this subsidy, the cost of their mistakes would reined in such behavior early on.

Authority and responsibility go hand in hand and must be equal. Whenever this balance is upset, there are consequences and they are easy to observe in our country. What we have is a political caste system of sorts in which some have authority and no responsibility, while others have not only responsibility for their own actions but for that of others.

As Ron Paul put it so concisely, when you subsidize something, you get more of it. America isn't the land of the free anymore. It's the land of the subsidized.

The best way to avoid becoming a member of the enslaved class is to pursue a life of minimalism. A thief cannot steal something you do not have.

The question is - how long can this transfer of responsibility go on? We can delay paying the Piper for a while, but he's going to get paid one way or another.

I agree with the diagnosis but I don´t think the future will be so dark (or not for long). As I see it, added to what you described, more and more people will start avoiding taxation: why pay it if the money goes to hell anyway? I have a better use for it. If you bring in stupid rules people will start going around them. This, added to what you wrote will create a lack of resources for the system and the system will eventually fall because be design, it never creates wealth (1. they don´t know how to do it and 2. the really do believe there is enough wealth, ONLY it is badly distributed). And quite soon there won´t be enough money to feed the masses and the masses will go against the system. And since the system has no solution for this, they´ll just let go. The question is how long it will take.It took 40 years to the european commies to run the countries to a point where they didn´t know what to do anymore.